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It’s that time of year again, and by that, we mean the time of year when Facebook start to roll out a few unexpected changes.

We want to make you guys aware that these changes are directed towards users news feed rankings, which henceforth will begin to favour posts from friends, and family members. Now, as much as we love them, unless you’re super close with your clients – these changes may cause a few hiccups with regards to reach and referral traffic amongst followers… potentially causing a decline in views for some pages depending on the sharing habits of their audience.

Side note: Keep an eye on this post for regular updates on any details regarding these changes.

 

Now that we’ve discussed that minor bump in the road, we want you to know that using Facebook as your chosen platform for video content marketing is still a valuable asset to your company, here’s how:

The great thing about Facebook is that not only can you post promotional videos, you can also chat live to your current and would-be customers.

Facebook Live lets businesses and users broadcast to their audience in real-time from their smartphones, kind of like FaceTime for social media. The great thing about broadcasting live is that you can actually see the number of users watching, and interact with them in real-time via the comment section – or even answer their question live in your video!

Bonus Points: One study conducted by the guys & girls over at FB found that viewers spend 3x longer watching live videos than videos in real-time. Take note and advantage of that, folks!

…but before you climb on board the video train, here are the latest updates to be aware of. Say hello to:

 

New Video Metrics

Facebook continues to push itself to the forefront of the video content field, and this recent addition makes it easier to understand just what, how and why certain content performs the way it does. That said, it also helps us create better and far more audience focused material. So let’s take a look at the latest updates available to us:

Audience Demographics: Knowing the age, gender and geographical location of your viewers is centric to creating the best content possible for your brand. Located in the ‘Audience & Engagement’ section of your Video Insights page, ‘Audience Demographics’ allows you to cut out the guess-work and really get to know your audience. This feature is great for understanding what type of content gets you your ideal market and gives us the ability to see whether our content is reaching our target audience or… not. Should the outcome be the latter, Audience Demographics is the quickest way to recognise and rectify that result.

Live Video Engagement: On the subject of getting to know your market, tuning into the behaviour of your audience is key to really getting to grips with engagement. While previously Facebook allowed us to track the peak amount of viewers watching our live streams, and the amount of viewers throughout the duration of;  the new update enables us to view behaviour metrics such as reactions, comments and shares in its own little section of Video Insights. You’ll find all you need to know about your viewers’ online behaviour under Audience & Engagement.

Views From Shares & CrossPosting: Easily accessed under the ‘Minutes Viewed’ and ‘Views’ section of Video Insights, Facebook now gives us the option to compare engagement breakdowns, not only from the original post – but from shares and cross posting, too. This new feature allows us to really understand where the majority of engagement stems from
…and once you know all this, you’re one step closer to creating a viral masterpiece!

 

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Now, on to exactly why you should create that masterpiece on Facebook.

 

You may be wondering why you should use this platform in particular when there are others available specifically for video content and video content alone

…valid question, but with a few very valid answers.

 

1). Third party links tend to underperform:

Yup, when somebody says ‘create a video’ our first thoughts typically navigate us towards platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, even a brand’s’ own website.

In reality, third party links tend to underperform. First off, though Facebook still allows us to post links to other platforms… thumbnails appear as a static image and actually require effort, and as much as we’d like to think that such a simple action shouldn’t make a difference – newsflash: it does.

Admit it, we’re lazy cyber-surfers. All of us. Videos with autoplay have advantage over static links, because we don’t have to do anything.

 

Facebook: 1 – Rest of cyberspace: 0

 

2.) Using Facebook to post your video is the social media equivalent of this moment:

 

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The word algorithm is still a sore spot for many of us, but Facebook has updated that same algorithm to reward video. That’s right, FOUR FOR YOU, VID-COCO.

Although photos easily outweigh video in sheer volume, video has the upper hand. How exactly? …well, videos posted natively on Facebook are immediately given a boost on the social media giants’ platform, increasing relevancy and a dramatic push in viewership, unlike third party links (see a pattern emerging here?).

Videos posted on Facebook get roughly 10% more promotion. There are over 1 billion Facebook users… that’s a lot of views.

FACEBOOK FTW.